Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Datuk Seri Madius Tangau said BCM certified professionals played a vital role to an organisation in ensuring that businesses continue to operate in the event of a crisis or a disaster.

“Currently a total of 400 Malaysians are BCM certified professionals awarded by the Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRI International).

“BCM has become a crucial subject for all industries, both public and private sectors to understand, plan, develop and implement essential steps to overcome any disasters,” he told reporters after launching DRI’s Regional BCM Conference and Awards of Excellence here, today.

DRI International is a non-profit organisation that helps organisations around the world prepare for and recover from disasters by providing education, accreditation, and thought leadership in business continuity and related fields.

Madius said, overall, awareness and knowledge on BCM in Malaysia was still low. Therefore the ministry, through CyberSecurity Malaysia and DRI International, had been working together to organise BCM public awareness programmes.

Meanwhile, Amirudin said the public needed to be careful and take preventive steps to avoid being attacked by “Ransomware”, a malware that infects computers and restricts access to the system until a ransom is paid to unlock it.

“Businesses can become infected with Ransomware and risk temporary or permanent loss of sensitive or proprietary information, disruption of regular business operations or even bring harm to an organisation’s reputation,” he said.

Among the steps that could be taken to prevent the Ransomware attack was to perform regular backups of all critical information to limit the impact of data or system loss and to help expedite the recovery process, he said.

Amirudin said for more information the public could contact CyberSecurity Malaysia’s Cyber999 Help Centre via email to cyber999@cybersecurity.my or mycert@mycert.org.my or alternatively by calling 1-300-88-2999 or the 24-hour line at 019-2665850. — Bernama